Nahua sat on a shore of fine sand.

Behind her was a pleasure island, a private retreat of Macuil or a trap for fools like her that were tossed into this plague-ridden segment of the Eternal Sanctum. ‘It was always all around us,’ she thought and gazed out at the ocean. The city hanging above, she scarcely registered. Its origin was just another unanswered question she did not wish to contend with.

A purple trail stained the sands, connecting where she sat to the viscous ocean before her. More of the plague mucus dripped from her. She shivered, not because she was cold or diseased, but because… what else could she even do? She sat there, gazing out at the vastness of her failure. Not an hour earlier, she had known herself as the figure that had practically eliminated the disease as a factor. For 500 years, none of her people had known the touch of the Giant’s Puss.

The name was a reflection of their misunderstanding of its nature. The Digestive Plague had always come from within. Nahua wanted to deny it with every fibre of her being. Cruelly, the truth was undeniable. She was within the Eternal Sanctum and before her was an ocean of a more virile strain of the plague than anything she had ever tasted before.

The axolotl of boundless life’s failure went as deep as the fathomless ocean before her.

‘Why did I drag myself out?’ Nahua asked herself.

Macuilcozcacuauhlti had given her the chance to die. Although her metal body was immune to the plague, other things dwelled within. Fish, large and small, put the ocean in constant motion with the swipes of the fins. Eels, thin and sharp-toothed, joined the motions like massive worms writhing through jelly.

Nahua had felt their jaws. They had snapped and tore at her, ripping pieces out of her. She had struggled. Every bite pained her, but she was used to such pain. She had struggled and struggled, her arms too weak to overcome them and their maws too weak to kill her swiftly. In their twisted forms, she recognized the signs of Atlaua. A dead god, a devoured god, servants of the one who feasted, the one who wanted her dead.

Her father.

Nahua clutched her head and screamed. She screamed until her lungs were empty, inhaled shallowly, then continued to give voice to anything and everything she felt. “WHY?!” What question she was asking, she didn’t even know anymore.

Pushing herself off the ground, Nahua-xoco-atl-xolotl stumbled towards the ocean of Purple. Trembling feet barely brought her to the edge of the waters before she collapsed onto hands and feet again.

“Do it… do it!” she cursed at herself to keep crawling. The fish were there, waiting to finish their mission. They were extensions of Macuil’s will. Why would she not oblige? Why was she frozen there, weeping and screaming like a child? All she had to do was let them end her. It would be no worse a pain than she had already endured. She would die alone in the dark. Her seal had been a useless sacrifice. At least she could die on her own terms. “Crawl! Swim!”

Shiver was all her body did. She stared at the sand between her hands. Tears fell from her eyes, the clear liquid making no change in the purple-soaked shore. Her head remained down, until she heard a miserable warble.

Lethargically, she lifted her head at the odd sound.

In the shallow of the water, less than fifty metres away from her, a small shape was slugging through the viscous plague. Nahua couldn’t even make sense of the shape at first, her eyes blurry from her tears. Even after blinking them away, she failed to get a proper look. All she saw was something black and white pushing itself above the surface and then slumping forwards. Behind it, dead, sliced fish and eels floated on the surface.

It wasn’t until the shape had pushed itself all the way to the shore that Nahua realized what she was looking at. Feathers glued together by mucus, the shape of Velka was unrecognizable. Her fur was spotty, revealing pink skin underneath. One of her wings was broken, standing off at an odd angle. Both wings were losing feathers as she crawled and slumped forwards. One of her hindlegs was torn up and bloody.

None of the injuries were as bad as the Digestive Plague she was covered by. Nahua could follow her feathers dissolving and the bald spots of fur growing. The Magryph’s eyes were glued shut by the plague. Aimlessly, she crawled further inland, meowing and warbling in pain in unsteady intervals.

‘She’s going to die,’ Nahua thought, sombrely. Then, the meaning of those words hit her with all the force of mortality. ‘She’s going to die!’

Jumping to her feet, Nahua ran. She nearly fell on the first couple of steps, but caught herself. Making her way swiftly across, she grabbed the Magryph’s wilting frame. The chimera swiped at her with sharp claws in a panic. Nahua cared not about the trenches dug into her skin. She would heal.

“Velka, it’s me,” she tried to calm down the Magryph, but the cat ears were as shut as the eyes. Nahua kept holding the desperately writing animal with one arm, her other hand already trying to do the only thing she ever had been able to.

To her boundless relief, she remained able still.

Draining an ocean was beyond her capability, but gathering the affliction off a single victim she could do. The virulent strain of the Purple was pulled from Velka’s fur and feathers, then from the skin, muscles, and organs. The fearful hisses grew gentler, the Magryph coming to understand what was happening.

The crust on her eyes came loose last. All of the plague gathered up in the consolidated shape of a peach, as it always did. That took Velka from death’s door, but it left her in no good state. Nahua devoured plagues, she was not a healer. There was nothing benevolent to her divine ancestry.

Mostly hairless, featherless, wing broken, and hindleg still bleeding, the Magryph blinked. A last miserable warble was interrupted halfway, before Velka tilted her head at Nahua. The animal forced herself on her three functioning limbs and nuzzled up against the demigoddess. A low, gentle purr reverberated in both of their chests.

Nahua inhaled slowly. Nahua exhaled with a tremble. The tears that she had barely blinked away came flooding back out. She wrapped her arms around the pet and hugged her as tight as she dared. The raw side of the Magryph’s head rubbed up against Nahua’s cheek.

“Why…?!” Nahua choked on her own words, her vision a coalescing of blurry colours. For all of her despair, she could sense another emotion: hunger. Too much of her was yearning to devour the affliction resting in her hand. All that life force stolen from Velka made her mouth water. She had naught but disdain for it. “Am I just another spawn of hell?”

The only answer she got was the continued purring of Velka.

Like that, they sat there for a time that Nahua could not measure. All there was, was misery. Nahua would have never moved, had it not been for the Magryph pinching her earlobe with her beak. “Ow?” Nahua reacted in confusion.

Velka wiggled herself out of the embrace, then started to stumble away from the shore. Sniffing, Nahua looked after her. She deserved to be forsaken again.

Just as the demigoddess thought that, the Magryph turned around. Back with Nahua, the animal bowed down and tried to pull on Nahua’s hand. “Just go,” the woman muttered. “I’m not worth the effort.” Her eyes fell on the peach again. ‘Father always said I could eat all I want,’ the hunger whispered from her memories.

She knew it was wrong.

The urge won out anyway.

Velka kept on pulling on her fingers, while Nahua sunk her teeth into the plague peach. It was refreshing sweetness itself, cold in her mouth but warm in her stomach. Every bite was delicious enough to make her forget about her situation for just a moment. She savoured it, eating small nibbles. In the end, there was an end even to modest consumption and she was left with fresh guilt in the pit of her stomach.

Pulling her knees to her chest, Nahua made herself as small as possible. “Just go!” she insisted again. Velka kept on pecking her, only growing more insistent. “LEAVE ME ALONE!”

A swipe of her arm caught Velka off-guard. It was a weak hit, but enough to send the injured animal to the ground. The anger was replaced with a fresh rush of helplessness. Mouth open, Nahua wished to speak an apology, but how could she even mean it.

Velka rolled onto her stomach, wiggled close, kept her chin in the sand, and just watched Nahua with big eyes.

“Now that is unexpected.”

Just when Nahua had thought she couldn’t hate her situation any more, she heard his voice. The demigoddess redirected her tired gaze to four figures that had manifested near the shore. The large, skinny form of the Flayer Lord led his fellow god-warriors with confident steps. Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl followed closely, their body language betraying a lingering confusion and uncertainty. Little care could be summoned for them. No attention could be brought to bear to look at Huitzilopochtli. Nahua dared not find out what she would feel if she looked at the man that had raised her now.

“I knew you would put the bloodless here, but the cat too?” Xipe-Totec mocked. “Haven’t you learned by now that your little tricks never work out?”

“I did not bring the cat here,” Huitzilopochtli’s tone was hollow. “It made it here on its own.”

Xipe-Totec cackled. “I suppose that works out for us.” The Flayer Lord approached the demigoddess with long steps, ultimately squatting down in front of her. His purple eyes beheld her with deep interest. “You have a choice still, Nahua-xoco-atl-xolotl. You’re of no use to the Great Devourer as fuel, but you could still serve.”

The suggestion left Nahua feeling… nothing. She was just too tired to evaluate the idea at all. She had cried and cried and now she wasn’t even angry anymore. All she felt was hollow and exhausted. ‘Is that what you feel, Father?’

For a brief moment, she beheld him after all.

She lowered her gaze swiftly. She knew he did the same.

The Flayer Lord gently brushed her bangs aside with a single claw. “Listen now, little axolotl,” he spoke impatiently. “Do you want to be like Huitzilopochtli, a broken tool? There’s so much more potential to be had. Renounce the invaders. Join your true father. You can eat all you want, indulge all you want, you can join us in living as gods should!”

“I don’t know,” Nahua mumbled.

“You need to eat,” Xipe-Totec encouraged and reached downwards. “A meal will-“ Nahua’s lethargic mind realized what his arm was extending towards. She threw herself in the path, releasing a cloud of her own disease as she did. Cursing, the god-warrior tossed her aside. “Foolish woman!”

“Do not touch her!” Nahua shouted back.

Velka was already on her feet. Her single intact wing was beating, failing to get her off the ground. Her limping gait was slow. Not even at full speed, she would have been able to outpace the Flayer Lord. “Don’t worry, I won’t kill her – that’s your honour,” he hissed, his lipless mouth twisting into a nightmarish grin. “Of all your siblings, you’re the only one we bothered to let develop. You’ll serve us, eventually.”

Xipe-Totec’s slow steps were every bit as cruel as she knew he was. Throwing herself in his path again, she latched onto his leg. He just laughed and dragged her along as he walked. Even if he was affected by her diseases, he chose to endure it to humiliate her.

“Why – Why do you even do this?!” she screeched.

The Flayer Lord’s grin turned darker still, a shadow of anger hushing over his face. He stared past Velka, inland, “I discovered the truth, bloodless creature. We’re figures on a great board, placed in advance by the greatest monster of all.” Grabbing her by the neck, he lifted her up. “Better to serve the one who will eat the broken world. Hold her!”

Nahua was thrown to Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl. They caught her, held her gently, their hands quivering. “What is even to be done?” the demigoddess muttered. The god-warriors did not answer.

Step for cruel step, Xipe-Totec approached the Magryph. Understanding that she could not escape, Velka faced the Flayer Lord. Aggressive warbles and deep meows offered a warning. Xipe-Totec just laughed.

To Nahua’s senses, what happened next was as sudden as a mountain slide.

Xipe-Totec’s head snapped to the side. He jumped back. A golden halberd slammed into the ground. A second later, three figures descended.

“It is too bright!” the pale rider groaned, hanging lifelessly from his emaciated steed.

“We fight in the shadow of the Necropolis, cease your whining,” the red rider barked, lifting a great hammer onto his shoulder, while his bulky horse neighed.

“The Horsemen of the Apocalypse are here!” the golden rider announced, lifting a radiant standard over him and his prestigious mount. Vampire, ghoul and wraith, the three riders stood between Xipe-Totec and the Magryph. The bottom of the standard slammed into the soil. “We shall do the will of the White Wanderer! Tremble, enemies of Death, for we have come to protect the sinless!”

“Finally, a rematch!” Xipe-Totec laughed and charged in.